In which we talk about what is and isn't deserved.
-x-
The first hour after my initial comments was mostly spent in a confused silence. Nobody was sure what to say, so the only noise left aside from the creaking of the wood floor was the sound of me slurping chicken soup out of the spoon Meds helped beneath my lips.
It was delicious by the way, and I'm not just saying that because my girlfriend was basically giving me breakfast in bed while I was under the weather. I'd be lying if I said that didn't help, though…
…
…Makarov was a patient man and watched me with an indecipherable expression. Sadness? Curiosity? It eventually settled on exhaustion as he sighed for what felt like the umpteenth time. Blissfully, the issue was taken out of our hands when a little girl with wavy, black hair entered with another pot of soup.
She put it on a nearby table and looked at Meds up and down, "Hey, lady," she said, "You aren't wearing shoes."
Medusa nodded, "That's true. Also, the sky is blue and you smell like a drunk." Her smile was thin, and she kept glancing at the diminutive guild leader. "Ars, say thank you for the soup."
"Thank you for the soup." I intoned from the bed.
"Yeah, you better be thankful." The girl huffed, glaring at Meds before backing out of the room. The moment she thought she was out of earshot, she started whispering things to the other guild members.
Only
most of my body was horribly injured. But little things, like my amazing sense of hearing, were coming back in bits and pieces. I couldn't make out everything they were saying, but it seemed that Meds suddenly appearing had put a lot of them on the back foot.
It's not like I could blame them. People didn't normally appear out of nowhere, and Medusa suddenly being in my room must have looked odd. And yet… though they were surprised enough to talk about it, they weren't shocked enough to
react to it.
Was it because I wasn't freaking out or anything? I guess if I raised a stink about it, they'd try to go after Meds, so the fact that I was cool with her
probably lent her some kind of credibility. Or maybe I was talking out my ass again. Who knows? I wanted to ask her about it. But there were more pressing matters at hand.
"So your name is Ars?" Makarov asked me, raising an eyebrow.
"Uh, actually it's Poe R.R. Acti… everyone just calls me Poe." I tried to smile, but was too tired to really feel it. So I settled on a neutral expression and tried to make myself more comfortable in the bed. "You guys saved me," I said when Meds drew the spoon away and back towards a pot. It sat there on the nearby table with steam wafting off the top, and the whole room smelled homier. "Thanks. You didn't have to…"
Makarov shook his head, "What kind of person would I be if I didn't help a young man when he needed it?"
"Even so–"
He cut me off before I could continue. "You were in a bad spot, Poe. I think you know as well as I do how injured you were. If young Cana hadn't seen you bleeding in that alleyway…" his voice faded as he shut his eyes.
"I'd have died," I tried to shrug, but only managed a wince… which turned into a flinch… and when I tried to jerk back in pain, Meds put a hand on my chest and I stopped moving entirely. I tried to take a deep breath, and my chest burnt from the effort. "Yeah. I know." I tried to look at the ceiling, "I'm used to stakes like that by now."
The wood spoon met my lips again, and I started sipping soup. It gave me something to focus on, anything would be better than the sad expression on that old man's face. Still, it sat there in my peripheral. Watching me, almost judging me – I felt a scowl make its way onto my face, and swallowed.
"Hey, don't start pitying me." I said to him, "Anything that happens to me, I probably did something to deserve it. I
know I did a lot of things to deserve it."
"Everyone
deserves things, Poe. I deserve a vacation, I can think of plenty of children who deserve parents, and plenty of criminals who deserve jail – nobody deserves to drown in their own blood, go into shock
three times, and become ill for weeks while recovering from…" He breathed, "I think Porlyusica has a full list. When you're well, I recommend you read it, learn it and avoid suffering those ailments in the future."
"Is that the name of the doctor who worked on Ars?" Meds asked, feeding me soup again. "I'll need to swap stories with her later – she did a decent job patching him up but her sutures could use a little more work."
Makarov chuckled, "If you want to tell her that," he said, "Be my guest. But don't be surprised if she has some choice words for you after the fact!" He had a face meant for smiling, and the moment he did it felt like the room got a whole lot brighter.
I almost smiled along with him; his laughter was just
that contagious. But something he said bothered me, and I tried playing it back in my head. Weeks? He said
weeks? "How long have I been out of it?" I asked, watching him.
Meds was quiet. Makarov's cheer faded. "Fifty days." He answered me, "Almost two months."
Air left me – I felt like one of those squeaky toys with how much that just
deflated me. So much time lost, and I had no idea. It felt like weeks, hell it felt like
days – and now, even with that time gone, I was still bedridden.
The conclusion hit me hard enough that I almost went blind from the force of how obvious it was.
"I'm not healing fast enough." My voice was even as I felt my eye narrow once more. It was serious-time, and I wasn't about to let anyone tell me otherwise. Given Medusa's expression and the fact that she hadn't moved for a little while… I think she realized it, too.
Makarov made to get out of his seat, "Don't do anything rash, now–"
"You don't get it." I would've shaken my head at him if moving my neck didn't hurt so much. "Normally, I heal
very quickly. I think the most I've ever been put out of commission by a fight was what, a week? Certainly not fifty days, and after that long, I should be up and fighting.
I'm not. Ergo," I breathed, "Something's obviously wrong."
"Do you think Terumi had something to do with it?" Meds asked, "Maybe something in the way he attacked you managed to cause lasting damage?"
"But fifty days? My body's naturally been producing Black Material for me to use for a
long time. And I can break that stuff down to help with my healing factor." It was a healing factor which, mind you, was three times redundant. My chimeric physiology increased my metabolism and healing, my Yoma flesh was basically cancer
in a good way that generated flesh
really fast and my nature as a Homunculus let me replace dead and destroyed tissue by converting raw energy. Hell, Wrath represented half of my Homunculus healing
alongside the healing offered from being a
fucking Noah.
So that was four times, now?
Whatever.
If I was stabbed, I was supposed to heal from it in
seconds. All the injuries I'd suffered weren't
that outside my purview. I'd overused my Ultimate Eye, overextended here and there, but that wasn't… Oh, wait, no. It
did make sense.
When Medusa gave me a silent nod of confirmation, I think I started to get it. Lust and Wrath were out of commission. That took out any healing I could get from being a Noah, a Homunculus – actually, it knocked out my Quincy abilities too, and my Innocence, so I wasn't healing with those either – and my Yoma flesh and chimeric physiology required I have access to a lot more food in order to heal faster.
So fifty days without solid food in me, and being stuck without my biggest cheats for getting out of bed fast left me in a pretty emaciated state. Combine that with the fact that apparently I've been
sick for several weeks, and most of my body's energy probably went to fighting
that instead of just to healing me.
In other words… it wasn't my fault? Yeah, sure. That sounded about right.
…Neat.
Even so, that left me without a reliable way to heal properly. All that was left was to sit here and eat food, drink water, stay healthy, and let my body repair itself. Maybe I'd recover a little faster as I grew to tolerate more, solid food. Until then I was stuck.
"Is Terumi the name of the man who did this to you?" Makarov asked us.
Meds nodded, "That's right," and without missing a beat, she made eye contact with the guild master. "He's dead now." She said to him.
He raised his hands like he was trying to placate us, or maybe like he was trying to say "so it goes". He hopped out of the chair and started walking towards the door, "I won't begrudge you for that," he said. "You said the name of our guild, so you must know about how we treat things like that."
"No killing," I answered for him. "You're famous for it – not really sure
why though. You're a 'light' guild, right? That means you're not supposed to murder people
anyway."
Makarov sighed, "Fairy Tail is a guild that supports
freedom, and attacking people without cause, killing them… we consider these things
thefts of freedom. We damage property, but we pay for it. We steal things, but we
return what we steal, or make up for it somehow." He scratched at the bald spot on his head. "I think it's safe to assume you acted to defend yourself, am I right?"
"You are," Meds replied, nodding. "But I doubt you'd give a free pass for holding off an attack or two."
"I don't know
exactly what happened, but that's in the past. Since you've been here, nobody has been harmed. And as you acted to keep yourself safe, if the problem really has been resolved… though I disagree with how you resolved it, I won't try punishing you for it–" He wasn't saying he couldn't – just that it wouldn't be
right "–But don't make a habit of it. And do
not abuse my trust."
A familiar pressure fell on the inside of the room, and I felt my soul shiver in fear and delight. This sensation, of a powerful wave of aura seeping into every crack and pore of the room around us, this feeling of a reaching wave that collapsed on top of me… I recognized it as
spiritual pressure. I recognized it as the
menacing aura, or of some strange and mystical sorcery.
Whatever had happened to this world, even its magic was affected down to the most basic level. What frightened me wasn't Makarov's power – make no mistake. He was
strong, and what I knew he could do in canon was only backed up more and more as he brought his soul to bear and
pushed on us.
No. Instead, I was frightened by the scale of how this universe
had to have been changed to fit what was happening. At that moment, when Makarov wanted to put the fear of God into us, I learned to fear something with a name I didn't
truly know.
Makarov taught me to fear Ra, and if I had my way then he'd never find out about that black thing.
"We understand." Medusa said to him; he was satisfied with that, and left to meet with the other guild members who still tried to spy on us and listen in.
Alone at last, I forced my head to turn so I could whisper to her. "The moment I'm done healing, we are
leaving." That was the plan. No grand battles, no fighting horrible villains, I didn't want to know what else in this world had been changed – I had no interest in exploring.
I was done the moment I woke up. Medusa, being the awesome girlfriend that she was, completely understood.
-x-
When my eye shut again, I saw Road Kamelot watching me with nothing but the purest joy. She'd fused herself with the wall of a nearby trench, buried into the rocks and dirt and wood so she could grin at me as though she were an animate statue.
I stepped forward of my own accord, a passenger in someone else's body, and listened to a voice that had only been heard by a select group of people. "Taking that kind of tone with me," the commander laughed. His breath smelled of cheap, hard ale. The room stank of the rot of trenches.
Combat was already over for the day, communications were coming in from all over. More bodies had fallen, more men and women had died fighting, and there were reds, whites, and blues all over the place as reinforcements flooded in from South America.
"Come on, Jojo…" I frowned. "Haven't I told you? Addressing me as a superior, shouting your rank, it makes 'em target you," he took a swig of his bottle, "Blasted krauts."
"What about the Akuma?"
"That cultist nonsense? Don't tell me you believe that – it's bollocks, top to bottom."
George, or I guess
I, tried to look indifferent to the idea. I knew people who'd fought them, I'd read the stories often enough – had a friend or two who visited New Orleans. It was a beautiful city, shame about all the land around it. I wouldn't have minded before, but by now I was finished with looking at battlefields.
They swore by it, said there were monsters from the east that replaced people and fed on their pain and souls. Sure it sounded like nonsense, but my mother had a hundred stories about
vampires of all things, so I wasn't about to dismiss it. Hearing about low-flying blimps with peoples' faces on them puts a special kind of terror into a man, even without the legends.
"Jimmy's plane got spike-bozzled, took a nose dive between Germany and France – all's quiet on our front, but some people are getting uppity."
"A general?"
"Nah. Different." He handed me a letter with a wax seal. It looked like there were three arrows pointing inwards right on the front of it. "Higher-ups passed it to me, said it was pilot's eyes
only–" he scoffed, drank from his bottle, and stared at Road's wall. There was nothing there, I knew, but I couldn't help but wonder what he saw.
My eyes went down to the front of the letter.
TO NOTÉ, FRANCE
REMEMBER OUR CAUSE
It was unsigned. When I tried to open it, he reached forward and put a hand on mine. "Not here. Not where I'm around." I frowned, but complied and put the letter away in my uniform's front-most pocket.
Watching my drunken superior, I eyed his gun. It was unloaded.
…Good.
"Is there anything you
can tell me about what's inside of this?"
"Nothing but the obvious," he sighed, "You might be asked to make a delivery."
"Same old, same old," I saluted him once more.
He hated it, but he wasn't about to do anything about it. So, he saluted back. "Good luck, Jojo."
My frown returned, "Please, sir. On missions like these, use my code name."
"You can use it yourself when you take your other uniform. That one might be a bit too… conspicuous for this."
"…Yes, sir."
Just another day on a front that nobody could see, and another package that would never see the light of day if I could help it – I couldn't wait for the war to be over.
…And even as he thought that, I didn't want to watch this man die.
-x-
One Foot on the Platform
Or: One Foot on the Train
End-304
